A Thousand Years Time
by sein Henker
Summary: Ianto is alive, but he can't ever go back to the 21st century. Jack is in trouble. The Doctor is there to fix everything. (Jack/Ianto/Twelve.)


Title: A Thousand Years Time  
><span>Summary:<span> Ianto is alive, but he can't ever go back to the 21st century. Jack is in trouble. The Doctor is there to fix everything.  
><span>Rating:<span> AO for explicit sexual scenes  
><span>Word Count:<span> 7,735  
><span>Disclaimer:<span> The British Broadcasting Corporation owns Torchwood, Doctor Who, and all related characters, settings, and trademarks. I do not profit in any way from this material.  
><span>Pairings:<span> Jack/Ianto, Jack/Twelve/Ianto  
><span>Contains:<span> spanking (hairbrush), character death fix-it, threesomes, oral sex, fellatio, anal sex, bare-backing, angst, punishment  
><span>Warnings:<span> allusions to torture, references to murder,

* * *

><p>"Quiet now," the Doctor said softly. "He's sleeping."<p>

But _the Doctor_ hadn't been quiet enough. Jack saw the change in breathing and the slight shift into a more comfortable position. Ianto was already awake.

"How did you do it?" Jack asked the Doctor breathlessly.

"I didn't," the Doctor said. "You did. Remind me to spank you for that later."

"Yes, sir," Jack said immediately. He kept staring at the man on the bed. Jack was half afraid that if he glanced away for even a second, the bed would be empty when he turned back to it. Would he wake up if he blinked? He was so busy watching the man on the bed breathe that he himself forgot to breathe for at least a few seconds. Why wasn't he turning around if he was awake? Whenever Jack faked being asleep, it was because he wasn't sure what was going on "_How_ did I do it?" Jack asked.

"Your blood made Rex immortal," the Doctor said.

"Yeah," Jack said.

The Doctor shrugged. "Works with other bodily fluids, too. At least I hope so. You're not secretly into vampirism, are you? Don't be secretly into vampirism. That's weird even for you, and I have my limits."

"I never drank his blood," Ianto said, turning around and sitting up. "But I have... I mean... I swallow. So I've got Jack's immortality now?"

The Doctor rolled his eyes and glared at Jack. "Ack! See that? You woke him up!"

Jack ignored the Doctor and smiled at Ianto. Ianto smiled back.

The Doctor sighed. "No, you're not immortal. Don't get any bad ideas. You don't _have_ Jack's DNA, you just... came into contact with it, and thus with the time particles in it, frequently and over an extended period of time. But it never set in. It's like... taking antibiotics, but not taking the full bottle. You feel better now, but all you've really done is make the virus stronger. The next time it hits you, it'll be harder to cure, which in this case means it'll be impossible. Even a direct dose from the Time Vortex like Jack got wouldn't save you. It worked _once_. You're going to die, it'll just be later rather than sooner."

Ianto took a deep breath and blinked a few times, then he looked at Jack. Slowly, he smiled. "Once is more than most people get to come back from the dead..."

Jack walked over to the bed. He reached out slowly and ran his hand through Ianto's hair. "Please tell me I'm awake and you're real," Jack said.

Ianto opened his mouth to say it, then hesitated. Just as Jack was starting to panic, Ianto got up onto his knees, grabbed Jack by the shirt collar to pull him down slightly, and kissed him. It felt like Ianto and it smelled like Ianto and without thinking about it, Jack pinned Ianto to the bed and kissed him a dozen times in a row. He reached down to start taking off Ianto's clothes, figuring that if the Doctor had a problem with it, he could leave, and but then Jack realized something and froze.

"You're in the same clothes," Jack said.

"Well, yeah," Ianto said, looking confused. "I haven't had time to change..."

Jack backed off him. "You don't know what happened..."

Ianto glanced over at the Doctor. "I died?"

"Do you remember?" Jack asked.

"My throat closing up?" Ianto said. "Lying in your arms and knowing I was about to die? Not the easiest thing to forget. But I thought..."

"You thought what?" Jack asked.

"Well, I lost consciousness, and then..." he nodded to the Doctor, "The next thing I knew, you were gone and he was there. He told me he was a doctor—"

"_The_ Doctor," the Doctor said. "I told you I was _the_ Doctor."

"Okay," Ianto said. "Maybe you did." He squinted at the Doctor for a moment, then shook his head. "But you're not—"

"He changed his face. He does that.

"But isn't he—"

"No. They look a lot like each other, but it's just a freak genetic coincidence." Jack said. "But what about you? Where were you? What happened? How did you get here?"

Ianto shrugged, figuring that it was best to just trust Jack and not dwell too much on the resemblance that the Doctor bore to the man who'd been offering to sacrifice millions of children the other day. "I'm not sure where I was. I had a horrible headache and I think I was feverish. But there were other people on the floor? I don't know. I didn't _care_. I needed a doctor and he said he was one, so I went with him."

"Poor lad could barely walk," the Doctor added. "Don't think he could have told me his own name. He didn't even say the 'bigger-on-the-inside' thing. I got him into bed so that he could sleep it off, and as soon as he was stable, I picked up you, Jack."

Ianto nodded, but he looked troubled.

Jack looked at the Doctor. "Why?" he said.

"I couldn't have them _messing_ with him!" the Doctor said. "If any one else had gotten to him before I did, the first thing they'd have done is they'd have taken him to a hospital and given him drugs or respirators or stomach pumps or something ridiculous like that. He needed to be left alone so that his body could heal itself. All I did was take him in here so that it'd have a chance to do so. If by some bloody miracle they didn't accidentally kill him in the hospital, they'd have tried to figure out why he was still alive and the others weren't, and they probably would have assumed that you'd duplicated your immortality, and when they started experimenting on him, _that_ would have killed him. Also..." the Doctor sighed and fixed Jack with a hard stare. "What you did to those invaders, you did because of him. Because of his death. If I'd left him alive, it would have changed everything."

"And would that have been so bad?!" Jack asked.

The Doctor shut his eyes and sighed. "I'm not going to change what you did, Jack."

"Then I did the right thing?" Ianto didn't know what Jack had done, but he could tell from the look on Jack's face that Jack already knew the answer to his question. It didn't seem like a good time to ask Jack for the story.

"You did _something_," the Doctor said, his voice completely steady. "That's more than a lot of other people can say, and I'm not going to change it. I've already moved your daughter and grandson, so—"

"You what?!" Jack asked quickly.

"I moved them," the Doctor said carefully. "I picked them up and sent them to the future. Jack, it's a terrible idea for you to have kids and grandkids running around before you were born—Oh. That's an important point. Remind me of that when I'm spanking you later—so I sent them to a time where they chronologically make _sense_ and can't upset your time-line."

"But..." Jack fumbled for words for a moment before finally forcing himself to just say it, "Steven is dead."

"Steven died," the Doctor said. "He's not dead. He didn't need to come in contact with your DNA like Ianto did. He was born with enough of it in him to make it work. _One_ freebee. I explained that to them. Your daughter used hers years ago, actually."

"Alice never died...?" Jack said.

"Yes," the Doctor said, "Actually, she did. You just didn't notice. Don't beat yourself up. People survive things that should have killed them all the time."

"She was fighting cancer a few years back," Jack said. "Not long after her mom died. But _she_ didn't die..."

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. "Let me guess: She got very sick, and then she suddenly got better?"

"… Yes," Jack said.

"And you didn't question it?" the Doctor asked.

"_Of course_ I questioned it! I sent Owen some samples and had him run some tests, everything came back normal, and I didn't think it could have anything to do with me because I don't ever get sick in the first place, so I wrote it off as a lucky medical accident and stopped worrying about it."

"Well, it did have something to do with you," the Doctor said. "It was just weaker. And it won't be passed on to great-grandchildren. That's a blessing." He shook his head. "You have a couple of other children in the 19th and 20th centuries, but I left the ones that don't know you alone. Figured that telling them everything would be riskier than leaving them around."

"So where are they?" Jack asked. "Alice and Steven, I mean."

"In the future."

"But where? When?"

The Doctor frowned and shook his head. "If they want you to know that, they'll contact you. You'll never be hard to find, Jack."

Jack was quiet. So they were alive, but he might have lost them anyway. He couldn't blame them.

"Don't worry," the Doctor said. "I didn't set them up to fail. I took them to a good planet with a good century ahead of it. They'll be fine."

Jack nodded. "Good."

"What you did," the Doctor said, "It set a terrible precedent."

"But you won't change it and I can't." Even Ianto couldn't read Jack's tone of voice.

"Aye," the Doctor said. "History is shaped by people who made the wrong choice as much as by people who made the right choice. Alice and Steven are fine now. A lot of other people won't be."

Jack dropped his gaze to the bedspread.

"I have a question..." Ianto said, glancing from Jack to the Doctor nervously.

"What?" the Doctor said.

"How long was I dead for?"

Jack looked at the Doctor, and Ianto followed his gaze.

The Doctor shrugged. "A few hours, I'd imagine."

"Alright," Ianto said quietly. "So why was Jack surprised to see me in these clothes?"

"Oh, well," the Doctor said. "That's subjective time for you. You saw Jack about a day ago, and you don't remember most of that day, given the state of you. Jack saw you five years ago."

"Five years?!" Ianto repeated. "I've been dead _five years_?!"

"As far as everyone in the world is concerned," Jack said, "Yes."

"Why did you get Jack from _five years_ after I died and not, I don't know, _the next day_?"

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "Because Jack waited _five years_ to tell me the whole story about your death. I didn't realize what had happened until just a few days ago, from Jack's point of view, and I can't reunite the two of your before he told me what happened, because then he'd never tell me what happened and I'd never reunite you. It's a paradox. Don't you watch films?"

Ianto held up his hands in surrender. "Okay," he said, "Fair enough."

The whole room was quiet for a few seconds.

Ianto sighed. "Shit," Ianto said. "_Five years_. It felt like a long nap..." He blinked a few times, as if trying to wake himself up, then took a deep breath. "Five years. So much must have happened! Who's the Prime Minister? How is everyone? How are interplanetary diplomatic relations?"

"Politics are pretty much the same," the Doctor said.

"As for the people," Jack said, "Everyone's great. Martha and Mickey came to join us after... Well, a few years back. Gwen had kids!"

"Right!" Ianto said. "Gwen is pregnant! ..._was_ pregnant...? Shit. That kid is, what, four years old now?" Ianto paused. "Kids? Plural?"

"She just had the second one," Jack said. "Two little girls. Anwen and Nesta." Then he frowned. "But you don't like kids, do you?"

"I'm going to like Gwen's!" Ianto promised quickly. He wasn't actually sure how true that was, but he was certainly going to make an effort to like them. He liked David and Mica. Gwen's kids weren't exactly family, but honestly, he was closer to Gwen than he'd ever been to Rhiannon.

The Doctor made a noise in the back of his throat. "Actually, no, you're not."

"I'm not...?" Ianto said.

"You're not going to like Gwen's kids. You're not going to _meet_ them." The Doctor sighed. "Ianto, I'm sorry, but I can't take you home."

"… Not even to 2015?" Ianto asked.

The Doctor frowned and shook his head.

"But Doctor—" Jack said.

The Doctor gave Jack a very dark look. "_They. Would. Kill. Him._"

Jack and Ianto both went quiet.

"Yeah," the Doctor said. "Remember what they did to you to try to kill you, Jack? They wouldn't think twice about continuing the experiments on Ianto, and unlike you, he wouldn't survive. And don't try to tell me that you could protect him, because no matter how much time passed, the_second_ you let your guard down, they'd pounce. Ianto will _never_ be safe in the 21st century. Steven and Alice wouldn't have been, either. Not even to the extent that they ever _were_ safe there." The Doctor sighed and looked at Ianto again. "I'm sorry, but you can't go back. Besides, how would you explain it?"

"The only person who'd need it explained is my sister," Ianto said with a shrug.

"So?" the Doctor said. "What are you going to tell your sister? That you just didn't feel like talking to her for five years?"

Ianto shrugged. "She'd believe it."

"Good then, your relationship was already awful and never speaking to her again won't be too hard on either of you," the Doctor said.

Ianto looked offended, but didn't respond, probably because the Doctor was right.

"Besides," the Doctor said, "I've already replaced your corpse."

Ianto wanted to ask just _how_ he'd done that, but Jack spoke before he had a chance:

"Alright," Jack said. "So take us back in time."

"Us?" Ianto asked.

"Yeah," Jack said. "Why would I leave you right after I found you? I mean, we could go back into the past and live out our lives together, and Gwen and Martha and their families would never even miss me. I'd just wait it out and find them again the day that I left them."

"The past," the Doctor said. "Really?" He looked at Ianto. "How attached are you to indoor plumbing?"

Ianto considered it for a second. "… Very," he said.

"How fond are you of horrible skin diseases?"

"Not."

"On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being upset and 10 being excited, how would you feel about being put to death for shagging another man?"

"One," Ianto said immediately.

"Have you ever wanted to live in the past?" the Doctor asked.

"No," Ianto said.

The Doctor looked at Jack. "I think he'd do better in the future."

"But I can't leave..." Jack thought about it for a second, then sighed. "Right. Okay. Something to look forward to, I guess."

"What?" Ianto asked.

"Seeing you," Jack said. "In the future."

"Aren't you coming with me?" Ianto asked.

"I'm going to be there," Jack said, taking Ianto's hand. "I'll just be going the long way."

"That's 100 years..." Ianto said.

"No!" Jack and the Doctor said in unison.

"Not 100 years?" Ianto asked.

"Are you fond of daleks?" the Doctor asked.

Ianto rolled his eyes. "Is _anyone_ but a dalek fond of daleks?"

"Fair point," the Doctor said. "No, don't go to the 22nd century. Rubbish century. And Jack's going to have his hands full anyway."

"23rd century is terrible too, unless you like long rides in crowded spaceships," Jack said.

"24th century isn't bad," the Doctor said.

Jack shook his head. "Ianto wouldn't be able to stand that heat."

"25th century...?" Ianto offered hopefully.

"No, that's rubbish too," the Doctor said. "All of your ideas are rubbish. Let Jack and I figure this out."

"The 25th century is one of the most polluted centuries ever," Jack explained quickly. "Given what happened to you... yesterday... I think we'd both feel better if we took you to a time where you'll be able to breathe."

"And I was just in the 26th century," the Doctor said. "It's full of daleks too."

"I'll be busy," Jack said gloomily. "27th century too. Dravidians."

"Foucoo in the 28th century," the Doctor said. "Can't you lot give war a break for five minutes?"

Jack ignored him. "The 29th century might be—"

"You'll be busy during the 29th century," the Doctor said. "I have it on good authority."

Jack thought about that for a few seconds. "Is there a war in the 29th century?"

"I didn't say you'd be busy with a war," the Doctor said.

"What, then? Whose authority?"

"Ack, spoilers. Forget the 29th century."

Jack shrugged. "The first Empire falls in the 30th century," Jack said. "I wouldn't recommend—"

"Yeah," the Doctor said, "Don't bother. Political upheaval. Mass executions. It's not pretty... You know what would be a good century for the two of you to settle down together?" the Doctor said. "The 31st. Yeah. That's where Amy and Rory used to talk about retiring. It's not where they ended up, but it's still a great time. No wars. No political upheaval. Breathable air in most cities. Indoor plumbing. It's all pretty great. I'm not taking you to Cardiff, though. Not on Starship UK. You two will have nothing to do with that."

"What's wrong with—"

"You'll find out when it's time," the Doctor snapped. "Scotland. The Scottish ship is great. Peaceful, free, well-designed, none of that English spacewhale bullshit. I'll take you to Edinburgh. Great city. Bigger than you're expecting, Ianto. Population booms. You know how it is. Still, you'll like it there. You'll stand out a bit because of your accents but it'll be fine. Neither of you are English and that's what matters."

"But..." Ianto said, "The 31st century... and you're not coming with me?" Ianto asked.

"I will be there," Jack repeated.

"Only if you want to be," Ianto said.

Jack froze. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Ianto shrugged. "A lot can change in a thousand years."

"A lot _will_ change," Jack said. "But not how I feel about you."

Ianto smirked cynically. "Jack, it's a thousand years."

"You'd be surprised how long you can love someone," the Doctor said.

Jack and Ianto both froze and looked at the Doctor. Ianto didn't know exactly what that meant, but he could tell from the look on the Doctor's face that the Doctor was speaking from experience. Jack knew exactly what that experience was.

Jack sighed and look back to Ianto. "You're still hung up on this?"

"Hung up on what?" Ianto asked.

"What you said as you were dying," Jack said. "That I wouldn't remember you in a thousand years. But it's been five years already—"

"That's not even one percent of a thousand!"

"But it's about 250% of the amount of time that we were involved. And my feelings haven't changed at all." Jack sighed. "I can't pretend that there haven't been others and I can't promise that there _won't_ be others in the next thousand years, but that doesn't change how I feel about you. I love you. And in a thousand years, I will still love you."

Jack leaned in and gave Ianto a long, tender kiss that Ianto knew very well, though he'd never been on this end of it before. He'd given it to Lisa just once, and to Jack a handful of times. It was a needy, desperate kiss that one gives a lover when they're _alive_, alive when they shouldn't be, alive and you can't believe it but you _want_ to believe it so desperately. They're alive and that's the only thing that matters and for one brief moment everything is actually okay.

"I will be there," Jack promised.

Ianto closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and nodded. "Alright," he said, because he knew that kiss, he knew that _feeling_, and he knew that if it was the other was the other way around, _he'd_ be there for Jack.

"Good," the Doctor said. He turned around and started to leave the room, but Ianto _had_ to stop him.

"Were you serious about spanking Jack?" Ianto asked. "Because that's actually something I'd really like to see, before I go."

"You shouldn't grin like that," the Doctor said, even before he turned back around. "You're not that innocent yourself. But as for your question, yes,_of course_ I'm serious about spanking Jack. You would be too if you knew what a bloody mess he was making of Time itself. The question is," the Doctor looked at Jack, "Will he let me?"

Jack cracked a smile. "Doctor," Jack said, "My ass has always been and will always be yours. Besides, if Ianto wants to see me get spanked, I'm not about to refuse him."

"Trousers down, then," the Doctor said. As Jack stood up and removed his coat, his trousers, and his pants, the Doctor walked over to a dresser on the other side of the room. He opened the top drawer on the left, and there was only one thing in it: a beautiful maple hairbrush.

The Doctor walked back over to the bed, sat down, and casually pulled Jack down over his lap. Jack calmly allowed himself to be manipulated. Ianto crawled backwards on the bed to give them a little bit of space, but made sure he was in a position to watch.

"So," Jack asked, "How bad is this going to be?"

"For reckless endangerment of all of Time itself?" the Doctor said. "Dark red, I should think. Going into purple, but not too purple."

Ianto blushed a little. He hoped he hadn't gotten Jack into too much trouble.

Jack just smiled. "Well, if I deserve it—"

"You do."

"It's been a while since anyone's given me a good spanking." He looked at Ianto and smiled. "Didn't realize you were into this, Ianto."

Ianto's blush got even darker. "Just watching, I think."

"You know what my favorite thing about _this_ hairbrush is?" the Doctor asked, running it along Jack's bare bottom gently.

"It was given to you by some beautiful, famous woman who—"

"There's a tiny strip of technology inside of it," the Doctor said, cutting Jack off. "It generates a force-field that _should_ cancel out certain properties of your immortality on any wounds inflicted with it. It's not very effective: It couldn't kill him, but it'll slow the healing down on surface-level injuries," The Doctor smirked wickedly. "You'll actually be sore for a few days."

Jack forced a smile for a moment, but then he gave up and frowned. "That's not yours," Jack said quietly. "I remember when that wire was made, and it wasn't made by you."

"It was made using _my_ materials from _my_ TARDIS," the Doctor said. "I'm comfortable calling it mine. Its creator doesn't need it anyway and if he did, I still wouldn't give it to him." The Doctor rubbed the hairbrush gently over Jack's bottom again. "I put it in a hairbrush," he said quietly. "If you don't want me to use it, I won't."

Jack bit his lower lip for a second, wiggled a little, and then tried to get comfortable. "It's fine," he said. "Use it." He smiled again. "It's a good use for it, actually. And I am overdue for a punishment that I'll actually feel for a few days."

"Are we ready?" the Doctor asked.

"I was ready the day you met me, Doctor," Jack said.

The first blow landed a second later. Ianto jumped just from the sound of it. Jack hissed. The second blow came down without any more warning, but Ianto was watching that time, so he didn't jump. Jack's breath caught. Already, Ianto could see Jack's skin turning light pink where the first blow had landed. Jack had caught his breath by the third blow, and he took that quietly and without flinching.

The Doctor's hand was so steady. He was gripping the hairbrush so tightly that his knuckles were going pale, and with every blow, he brought his hand up over his shoulder and swung it down with force until it collided with Jack's skin. Sometimes, a blow would be slightly harder than Jack was expecting, or it would land in just the wrong place, and Ianto would see Jack jump again. Other than that, Jack held still on the Doctor's lap. Ianto saw him wiggling his feet to shake off the urge to struggle out of the Doctor's grip, but Jack seemed to have experience with this, and Ianto had a feeling that if he made the Doctor restrain him, the blows would be that much worse for it. Ianto wasn't sure whether he was rooting for Jack to stay still or to move.

Slowly, by degrees, the color of Jack's skin changed. It had started off pale. Apparently, Jack hadn't started frequenting nudist beaches in the last five years. Soon though, the blows had landed on enough of Jack's skin to turn his ass a sold pink color, and as they kept falling, the color got darker.

And as they got darker, the look on Jack's face got more and more unpleasant. When Jack was biting down on his lip and the Doctor was showing no sign of stopping, Ianto decided to be useful in the only way he knew how: He grabbed the pillow he'd been sleeping on earlier, and offered it to Jack. Jack eagerly bit down on it, and when the very next blow fell, he let out a loud grunt into it.

Ianto felt guilty, until he noticed the Doctor shifting his legs to accommodate Jack's growing erection. The Doctor and Ianto were both hard, too, and though the Doctor was completely composed, save that one body part, Ianto noticed that his own breathing was hard, and after handing Jack the pillow, he hadn't moved back to his original position. He was practically on top of Jack, and since Jack was literally on top of the Doctor, Ianto was close to the Doctor as well. He could actually hear the _swoosh_ of the wind resistance on the brush, and from this close, the sound of the brush hitting Jack's abused flesh was even louder. Ianto's heart was beating at a nice and quick rate, but it skipped a beat more than once when the sound was so loud and piercing that Ianto _knew_ it must have been agony. Jack let out moans that confirmed it every time.

Jack had taken harder spankings than this, of course, but _this_ spanking came with an emotional element that he was finding himself surprisingly unprepared for. This was _his Doctor_ spanking him. He'd disappointed his Doctor. That was a feeling that Jack liked considerably less than he liked the feeling of that brush on his backside. And Jack had had voyeurs before, of course—John _loved_ an audience for a good BDSM scene, and Jack was certainly not opposed to one—but never Ianto. This was Ianto, come back from the dead to watch Jack be spanked and humiliated, and Ianto was bulging in his pants and Jack was learning something new about Ianto and loving it.

Just when _Ianto_ was starting to think that this was a bad idea and that he really couldn't take any more, the Doctor paused, with the hairbrush raised over his shoulder, and looked carefully at Jack's abused backside. He gently touched it with his left hand, though Jack didn't seem to notice or appreciate the gentleness of it. He flinched from the touch all the same.

The Doctor lowered the hairbrush. He pet Jack's head once, and Jack cautiously removed his mouth from the pillow.

"Done already?" Jack said, smiling slightly.

"Don't," the Doctor said. "I can go on."

Jack looked away.

"Up," the Doctor said. As Jack started to crawl off of him, he nodded to Ianto's erection. "And look at that! You should take care of that for him!"

"Then who'll take care of you?" Jack asked, pulling his own shirt off.

"I can," Ianto said, then he glanced at the Doctor for permission.

The Doctor nodded.

"It's been five years since I made you come by penetrating you," Jack said. "I think we're overdue."

"It's been like a week—" Ianto said, and then he remembered. He and Jack froze for a second, but then Ianto shrugged and pulled his shirt off while the Doctor undressed.

Jack stood up and went over to the dresser where the Doctor had retrieved the hairbrush. He opened the drawer opposite the one the Doctor had pulled the brush from, and in it he found a jar of lube. Either the two of them had planned this well in advance, or this room was magic. Ianto wasn't sure which he believed.

Jack returned to the bed just as the Doctor finished undressing, and then they were all three resting on the bed, naked.

Ianto guided the Doctor down onto his back, and then Ianto got onto his knees and hovered over the Doctor's lower-body. Ianto knelt down, keeping his butt in air for Jack, and licked the Doctor's cock with a slow, wide lick. The Doctor made a strange noise in the back of his throat, and Ianto paused to find a look of very pleasant surprise on his face.

"Have you never done this before?" Ianto asked, hoping it didn't sound judgmental. After all, he'd been there himself just a few years ago. He could still remember how nervous he'd felt when Jack first reached for his zipper and Ianto stammered that he'd never actually been with a man before. Jack had been kind and reassuring, and if the Doctor was in the same position, Ianto wanted to be the same way, or at least not to make him feel_worse_.

"Not in _this_ body," the Doctor said. "It's always a little bit different. Go on, though. Please."

Ianto didn't know how to respond to that verbally, so he obliged. He returned his mouth to the Doctor's cock, and gave a few short, quick licks as he felt Jack's well-lubed cock pressing against his arse. Ianto was careful to keep his torso still and move only his head while he ran his tongue over the Doctor's long shaft, and he felt first the pressure at his arse and then the wetness, the openness, and the fullness of Jack's thick cock sliding all the way into him. They'd had sex often enough and recently enough that it didn't _hurt_, at least not to any degree worth complaining about, but it sting for just a moment, and Jack knew that he needed to give Ianto a moment to adjust, so he held still.

Ianto returned his attention to the Doctor. He gave one final, slow lick around the head of the Doctor's cock, and then he pulled back, opened his mouth, and took the Doctor's cock in his mouth. He began to suck, and the Doctor made several more loud, appreciative noises, while Jack began to move inside of Ianto.

Jack slowly pulled back until he was nearly out of Ianto, and then slowly pushed back in. It teased both of them more than it gave either of them real pleasure, but Ianto knew that it was just a test thrust to make sure that he was ready for Jack to really get to work on him. While still sucking the Doctor's cock, Ianto moaned eagerly, and Jack the message while the Doctor muttered "Oh! Oh..."

Ianto balanced on his knees and his left hand and brought his right hand up to rub the Doctor's balls while Jack thrust in and out of Ianto quickly, hitting Ianto's prostate and making Ianto moan involuntarily. The Doctor continued to make sounds of ecstasy and appreciation, and Jack grunted as he thrust into Ianto again and again, his thick member going deep and hitting Ianto in just the right spot every time.

The Doctor came first, with a loud shout and a flood of warm fluid down Ianto's throat. Ianto didn't gag, but it was too much for him to hold in his mouth, so some of it dribbled onto the bedspread when the Doctor pulled his cock out of Ianto's mouth. Ianto swallowed what he could, smiled at the Doctor, and then began to suck the spilled fluid up off the bedspread and off the Doctor's skin.

He was still lapping away at the fluid when his own orgasm arrived, sending Ianto's fluids down onto the bed with the Doctor's and covering Ianto's thighs. Jack came almost immediately after, with a loud grunt, and then he pulled out Ianto, pushed Ianto onto his back next to the Doctor, and proceeded to get down between Ianto's legs, and run his tongue over Ianto's thighs in long swoops, before finally taking the tip of Ianto's cock into his mouth and cleaning that off. Jack flopped down onto his stomach next to Ianto, and the three of them laid there for a minute and panted with each other. Ianto sat up first, and when he did, he saw that Jack's arse looked no better than it had when the Doctor stopped. It may have looked slightly worse.

He wondered how long it would be hurting Jack, and if Jack would be bothered by the pain or if he'd like it, because it would remind him of this. He hopped for the latter.

Once Ianto was up, the Doctor snapped out of his post-orgasmic bliss and got up as well. "Well, come on then. Starship Scotland is waiting."

"I need a shower," Ianto said.

"You're stalling for time," the Doctor said, glaring at Ianto slightly. But then he sighed. "Alright. _One_ shower, and then we need to drop you off and get Jack home."

Right. Because Ianto and Jack weren't going to the same place. Ianto's stomach flipped unpleasantly, but he got out of bed anyway, gathered up his clothing, and followed the Doctor out of the room with Jack behind them.

"_One_ shower" turned out to mean exactly that. The Doctor led them down the hall to a bathroom with a large, luxurious shower with about five shower heads, and they all three piled in and soaped each other down for ten minutes before the Doctor insisted that they wrap things up, get dressed, and head to the control room. Ianto started to object—He wanted just five more minutes and there was precious little he wasn't prepared to offer to get it—but the Doctor gave him a look that seemed to say that he would go get the hairbrush, if he had to, so Ianto sobered up and followed him.

This was ridiculous. This was so, completely ridiculous. Four days ago Ianto had been living in his hometown, then he'd had to flee to London, then he'd _died_, and now he was about to move to Edinburgh in the year 3000-and-something, and all he could do was _hope_ that Jack would be there to help him land on his feet. His pulse got faster with every switch the Doctor flipped, and he heard a strange noise that made his stomach flip, and then everything went quiet, and he had this horrible feeling that they'd landed.

Ianto did not have anything against Scotland. He'd never been. He and Lisa had been planning to spend a long weekend visiting her brother in Glasgow, but then Canary Wharf had happened and killed those plans before they ever came to fruition. Edinburgh was not a city he'd ever felt a strong desire to move to, but he wasn't terrified of it, either. He didn't even have anything against the year 3000-and-something. He'd never been there either, but Jack and the Doctor both seemed to think he'd like it. Really, it would probably be fine. Jack was going to be there, and wasn't that all that mattered?

"Well," the Doctor said, opening the TARDIS door. A gust of cold wind blew through and made Ianto shiver. "Here we are. Edinburgh, Starship Scotland. September 27th, 3009. It's a Wednesday, in case you need to know. Don't know why you would, but you never know."

Jack smiled and stepped out of the TARDIS behind the Doctor. He opened up his Vortex Manipulator, hit a couple of buttons, and smiled. "It's 1:18pm," Jack said, smiling and nodding for Ianto follow him.

Ianto did.

It looked... almost exactly like Ianto had pictured Edinburgh in 2009. They were standing on a cobblestone street under a gray sky, surrounded by stone buildings. It was raining steadily, and people were rushing past with umbrellas that looked like they could have been purchased in 2009 and coats that were in a style Ianto didn't recognize or care for, but they were still clearly coats. It was about ten degrees out.

"We're getting wet," Ianto said, and he _was_ uncomfortable, but it wasn't really because of the weather.

"Aye," the Doctor said. "That happens when you stand outside in the rain.."

"How is it raining on a spaceship?" Ianto asked.

"It's not," the Doctor said. "Not really. It's not real rain. It's all controlled by two people in the basement of City Hall. See, that's part of what makes Edinburgh good for you. They _miss_ Earth here, so they tried to make it as much like some as possible. They keep the buildings and the streets looking the same and they simulate weather.. Rain, sunshine, snow... It'll all feel just like the natural stuff you're used to, but it's completely man-made. Watch the weather here. Meteorologists don't just _predict_ the weather, they _make_ it. They're never wrong, unless someone cocks something up. Or they go on strike. But you don't need to worry about that for, oh, thirty years..."

"Got it..." Ianto said. He looked up and down the street, at shops and parents hurrying their children along, and he sighed. "Now what do I do?" he asked.

Jack looked up and down the street too, and he pointed the a coffee shop across the street and four buildings up. "Meet me there in five minutes," Jack said.

Ianto turned to him and raised his eyebrow.

"Seriously," Jack said. "Go. I'll be there in five minutes. Just go... and don't turn around."

Ianto's face slipped into a poker face. "You'll be there in a thousand years," Ianto said.

Jack opened his vortex manipulator again and began to hit more buttons. "I will be there at 1:25 on September 27th, 3009. I _swear_." Jack cupped Ianto's face and kissed Ianto. "Go. I will be there on time to pay for your coffee. Trust me."

Ianto didn't see where he had much choice. He turned to the Doctor and nodded uncomfortable. "It was nice to see you again," he said. "And, er, thanks for everything."

The Doctor smirked and nodded. "You too," he said. "I'll be in touch." He turned around and put a hand around Jack's shoulders to herd Jack into the TARDIS.

Ianto took a deep breath, turned, and walked up the street. He heard that sound again, and he knew it meant that behind him, Jack and the Doctor were leaving. The man that loved Ianto was about to vanish for a thousand years. Yes, he'd promised to be there, and yes, Ianto believed that _that_Jack Harkness, the one who'd made the promise to be there, meant it. The trouble was, he had a thousand years to change his mind and probably plenty of viable alternative options. Ianto had five minutes, and no viable alternative options.

What would he do if Jack wasn't there? He could steal money, if he knew what money looked like in this century. Since Scotland didn't appear to even be connected to the UK anymore, if the fact that they had separate spaceships was anything to go by, he somehow doubted that currency with Elizabeth II's face on it would be worth anything. Hell, it probably wouldn't be worth anything in the UK. How long was the currency valid for after a monarch died? Probably not 1000 years...

He could steal stuff. He wouldn't lose any sleep over stealing an umbrella right now.

At least then he'd have something to keep him dry until he found a bridge to sleep under. Did they have bridges on space-ships? Well, the Doctor had said they were striving for historical accuracy. Maybe they'd built rivers. Ianto could find a bridge.

Ianto could figure things out quickly enough, if he had to, and he'd invent some marketable skills and soon enough, everything would be okay.

He was still playing out worst-case-scenarios in his head when he pushed the door to the coffee shop open.

There were a handful of people in the shop, but none of them were Jack.

Ianto sighed. He looked around for a clock and found one behind the counter. It was 1:23. Jack still had two minutes, but Ianto had already given up. Jack had _one thousand years_ to plan for this and anticipate it. Ianto couldn't help but feel that if Jack _really_ still cared, he'd have been early.

Still. On the off-chance that Jack _had_ waited a thousand years and was going to arrive right on time, the least Ianto owed him was to wait five minutes. Ianto sighed and slumped into a chair near the door.

"Oi!" cried a teenager behind the counter. Ianto looked up and found that she was looking right at him. "You can't sit down without ordering something!"

"Sorry," Ianto said, standing up. "I was just... waiting for someone."

The teenager squinted at him. "You talk weird," she said. "Are you Welsh?"

"… Yes?" Ianto said. Then he remembered that he was on a spaceship occupied entirely by Scottish people, and that it was entirely possible that this girl had never actually _met_ anyone from Wales before.

"Oh!" the girl said, suddenly blushing. "I'm sorry, sir! I didn't realize—I'll have your drink in just a minute!"

"I don't order anything..." Ianto said.

"Captain Harkness ordered for you when he called," the girl said, already turned around to make it. "He also says he's really sorry, but he got tied up at work—It's the asteroid belt, I'll bet you—and he'll be here as soon as he can."

Ianto breathed a sigh of relief and collapsed back into the chair.

"The news out of Starship UK's been pretty bad lately," said an older man as he passed Ianto on his way out the door.

Ianto look up at him. "Has it?" he said.

The man must have mistaken Ianto's genuine ignorance for an attempt to shut down the conversation, because he just stared at Ianto sadly for a moment, sighed, and said, "Take care of yourself." He forced a smile and said "Welcome to Scotland!" as he stepped out into the rain.

Ianto's coffee was done a minute later. Ianto didn't know what it was called and he'd never tasted anything like it before, but it was sweet and he liked it, and he liked it all the more because Jack had ordered it for him.

He'd nearly finished it by the time Jack walked through the door.

Jack saw Ianto, smiled, and then seemed to realize that Ianto was _not_ smiling, and frowned. "Don't hate me," he said. "If it hadn't been an emergency—"

"I understand," Ianto said. He started to pick up his coffee cup, then he paused. "Actually, no I don't. What do you do?"

"To make a long and complicated process simple," Jack said, "I'm one of the people that keeps this ship from getting sucked into a nearby ships gravitational pull and sending us all crashing to our deaths."

"Oh," Ianto said. "I guess it's... nice to have someone I trust doing that job."

Jack smiled. "I had today off. But..." he sighed. "Emergency protocols. Everyone got called in. But it's taken care of! We're safe."

"That's... good." Ianto said. "So what do we do now?"

"Well, that's up to you," Jack said. "I was kind of hoping we could get lunch and then go back to my place."

Ianto smiled. "You're place... I guess you're not living at the Torchwood base anymore..."

"There isn't even a Torchwood base on this ship," Jack said. "We don't need one. There isn't a rift. I get called in to deal with certain Special Situations, but that's... off-the-books. I have an apartment... It's... nice. Big. Synthetically sunny. I like it... I'd like more if you lived there too."

Ianto looked down at the table. "So much can change in a thousand years," he said.

"Ianto," Jack said softly, making Ianto look back up and meet his eyes, "I know that you're afraid." Jack swallowed hard. "I am too," he whispered. "I can't pretend that I haven't changed at all, but I don't think it's been much and I would really like to think that it's for the better," Jack ssighed. "For the last thousand years, I've really, really tried to be a man that you'd want picking you up here, for whatever that's worth."

Ianto smiled.

Jack reached over the table, grabbed Ianto's hand, and squeezed. "I've been through some stuff that we're going to need to talk about. But I _am_ still the person that I was before, and the way that I feel about _you_ hasn't changed at all in a thousand years. We can work through this. I really want a second chance with you and I will do _anything_ to make it work."

Ianto looked up at Jack slowly. Jack was right. Ianto was terrified. It had been a thousand years. That was a Hell of a lot scarier than five years. He had nothing but Jack's word for the fact that Jack was still the man Ianto had fallen in love with.

But there it was. He _had_ fallen in love with Jack, and he was still very much in love with Jack. He was more sure of that than he was of anything else in his life right now. If Jack wanted to try to make things work between them here in the 31st century, Ianto certainly did too.

"I love you," Ianto said.

Jack leaned over the small round table and kissed him. "I love you too."


End file.
